chaimgingold

22 ms·

1.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Yes, it's great!
2.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
I forgot to answer your first two questions: > - how much does it go into people and personalities of the team and stakeholders, besides the technical design of the game? A lot; it all goes together. > - it sounds like first part of t
3.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Thanks for sharing this!
4.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Feels like there should be an xkcd about this. I asked Claude to write one, but it wasn't very funny. Actually, Claude agrees with you that the energy used for training AIs is mere pocket change compared to climate simulations. (Can I
5.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Thank you. Hmm, a big existential question and I haven't had any coffee yet. There is certainly anxiety in the uncertainty. (Was spending over ten years researching and writing this book––intermixed with other things--a good use of tim
6.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Should be! ROMchip posts recordings on their YouTube channel afterwards: https://www.youtube.com/@ROMchipJournal
7.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Focus is the original SimCity, but many Maxis Sim- games up to EA acquisition are touched upon, especially the long saga of what became The Sims.
8.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
I'd be very interested to hear of other books and articles like this, too. Edwin Hutchins's Cognition in the Wild is one of my favorite books. It's very technical and ethnographic, but less historical. It doesn't deal
9.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
I think yes, and so did Vannevar Bush (OK, not the game part). The first two chapters of Building SimCity are dedicated to non-computer simulations for this reason. Vannevar Bush and his analog instruments, like the differential analyzer,
10.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
LOL. This must be the reason the Chicago Manual of Style indicates hyphens here. And it must also be the reason an MIT Press copyeditor reviewed the whole manuscript very carefully. (Which then triggered some legalistic arguments from me ci
11.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Definitely not a videogame. I wouldn't want the responsibility of allocating that quantity of energy and resources. I think ChatGPT and its brethren are fascinating, amazing, and useful, but your question makes me think probably nobody
12.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
You're welcome, and thank you! I agree! There's a lot of talented people out there. Hopefully someone will make something like that one day.
13.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
This is fascinating! (All simulation requires abstraction.)
14.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
I want to bump a few things that folks linked to below: [1] Will Wright (designer of SimCity) will be interviewing me about the book on July 19th at 2PM ET. We thought it would be fun to turn the tables and have him interview someone else f
15.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Your film has some beautiful stuff in it!
16.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
I definitely feel like I've made a new internet friend. :D
17.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
That’s a fascinating idea! One of the surprising things I learned while researching this book was that Maxis was actually trying to do that at one point, and in fact more. They had an initiative called SimWorld that would allow all their si
18.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Thank you! Not to be defensive, but I want to say more about this because I think it's a fascinating subject with Spore in particular and games, software, and technology generally. My take is that Will Wright had a very exciting vision
19.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
LOL. Thanks! I think a lot of videogaming ideas took off after Spore that were very likely influenced by it. Shades of Jodorowsky's Dune? (But I think Spore was actually more successful than many give it credit for, which has been poin
20.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Honestly, I'm not much of a building sim player these day! I love videogames but they're so complicated and take so much time, right? Seems like City Skylines is the heir, right? Or maybe it's Minecraft and Tiny Glade? I thin
21.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Thank you!!! (He really did make that typo and REALLY wanted to be inside my laptop screen and tap the keys just like me and was being super aggressive.)
22.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Hi Ryan!! I got a PhD, did some indie game stuff, made some babies (with some help, mainly from my wife), design consulting. You can see more of my projects here: https://chaim.io , like some tangible/mixed reality computing
23.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
The main thing I did was design the Editors (like the Creature Creator), but I initially joined as an intern in 2001 and did some really fun divergent prototypes for Will Wright while the project was in a nascent state, and a bunch of other
24.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Hi! I wrote this book. Ask me anything. I also was a designer on Spore. I'm also trying to feed my 8 month old lunch and he is very excited to asn``wer anything too.
25.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
PC Gamer just ran a piece on some of the Nintendo history in there. Includes a fun old pic of Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Jeff Braun. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/in-1989-a-nintendo-bigwig-...
26.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Yes. There's a whole chapter on this with tons of diagrams, not code.
27.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Thanks, Don! Please scan that! She recently found a shrink wrapped copy of a teacher guide she coauthored with Michael Bremer and opened it (!) because we disagreed about what was in there, LOL. It's destined now for her UCLA archive.
28.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Building SimCity only talks about pre-EA SimCity. So there's SimCity, SimCity 2000, and SimCity for SNES, but not much else—aside from how SimCity 3000 was a train wreck that helped destroy Maxis.
29.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Hi! The focus is SimCity, but once the book gets into Maxis I get into SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, and The Sims. They aren't treated in as much detail, but they are here because they are crucial for understanding the overall arc of Maxi
30.
by chaimgingold 2y ago
Stefan Helmreich's book is indeed brilliant! I used it extensively when writing Building SimCity. Stefan was quite helpful in researching my book, sharing and checking some old SFI documentation so I could determine things like who vis

More ›